August 8, 2019

Yesteryear
One year ago today: August 8, 22018, HDC = hotdog cart.
Five years ago today: August 8, 2014, the bottom 14 gears.
Nine years ago today: August 8, 2010, a busy post.
Random years ago today: August 8, 2008, the only thing you can’t shrink.

           This, you don’t get in other blogs of any merit. Compliments of Wal*Mart and now brought to you, it’s banana ripening chart. Chose your perfect consistency. Green bananas are evil if you ask me, and mushy bananas are for fruity drinks at the floof bar. Hello from Hermitage, Tennessee. Ispent the day recovering. It’s mosquito season, I had to do a $100 shop just to settle in, and slept twelve hours. The only event of the day was an e-mail from Ray-B saying he’s back on the cruise ships.

           How about those new set of satellites launched by Finland that can map anything down to less that a yard (one meter). This is an effective use of synthetic aperture. Instead of a single radar beacon, synthetic aperture uses a moving beam, or in this case, a lot of small moving beams rather than one big one. It won’t be long before the authorities begin using that for illicit tracking purposes, but the one common theme to a surveillance society is that nobody will protest until it is too late. The radar concept is easy to grasp, I’ll run through it.
           You may have heard of phased array and side-looking radar, they work on the same principle. An “airport" radar sends out a single beam and measures the echo. If the target is moving, the echo returns at a slightly different frequency, known as the Doppler Effect. Electronically, it is a small step to start measuring those small differences to get a 2D picture of the target. And another small step to start moving the source of the radar beam to get a series of pictures that can be reassembled into a 3D view. Almost anyone who has programmed a microcomputer could make this happen—it uses a commonly available chip called a shift register.

           The problem being how to display the results. It takes a lot of savvy to even try. The most meaningful display would naturally be a two or three dimensional presentation. I understand there is a coding language called Python that claims to make it easy. But I looked at Python years ago and it was another chaotic mess of C+ style bull. Commands were not English words, syntax depended on queer usage of punctuation marks, and the code was dependent on such idiotic things as how far the line was indented. Only mental midgits come up with this kind of shit and call it programming.
           Here’s that better picture of the church place for sale in Cookesville. This is the place with the 5,000 square foot meeting hall. Here is one section, I think this is the same photo that came out so blurry last time around The boy’s bedroom. Ha, you should see the living room.

Picture of the day.
Turkish elevator safety committee.
Remember to use BACK ARROW to return to blog.

           Here is the solution when your doggie has a sore paw. Get a total babe to push him around in a baby carriage. Nobody will say anything. Yep, that’s the same doggie, but with a summer haircut. He get’s pushed outward bound on the daily walks, and gets to run home unless he’s too tired. The doggie, quickly learning this, is tired all the time.It’s health food city again. The only item in the fridge I recognized was quinoa. You’ve heard of chicken friend rice? Well, chicken fried quinoa was brunch today.

           Not bad, but like rice, you have to add all the things that make it taste good. I found the old TV screen only to discover it does not have any digital inputs. Despite an array of jacks on the chassis, none of it will work with my beautiful Samsung Blu-Ray™ device. I stopped at two Wal*Marts to check if they had the convertor cable. Nope, the usual. They had a unit that looked like the correct HDMI to RCA, but the box said it was composite, a different format. It had the right number of jacks for RCA, but the yellow port was labeled CVBS. Nobody present know what that was.

           The adaptor I want costs $8. The CVBS thingee was $26. I’m glad I didn’t risk the money, since back home I find the CVBS can mean composit video baseband signal or color, video, banking, and sync. All of it gibberish to most people, and whoever comes up with this bull donkey knows it. There are a ton ads, but nobody seems to carry the item in stock. They all want to ship it to you, which winds up costing more than the article in this instance. I’ll shop around a bit more. It’s not like TV is a priority even when I don’t really watch it.

ADDENDUM

           Jigsaw puzzles are quite rare for me, but I find them great passtime when it is too hot, or as an alternative to reading on widespread occasions. The puzzles in Tennessee have a dual purpose and this one is a cat magnet. They get bored and restless without enough attention. This table works because their food dishes are just off to the right.
           By late evening the Reb came in the door and we decided to hit up Nadeen’s, the restaurant up on Lebanon Pike. They usually have that excellent guitarist around but not this time. As usual, my appetite abandoned me after a few bites, so the fridge is full of leftovers. And that, gang, was the whole day. Except for walking the dogs after dark, when the Tennessee mosquitoes have bedded down. Do not set food outdoors in the twilight, a mistake most people make only the once.

Last Laugh